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A 12,000-year-old obelisk with a human face was found in Karahan Tepe

411 points| fatihpense | 4 months ago |trthaber.com

187 comments

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j-kent|4 months ago

Can I just say that it is fantastic that they have included so many detailed pictures of the obelisk. How many times have you visited an article about a discovery only to have no pictures in the article.

vidarh|4 months ago

I read this comment before clicking, and half expected it to be sarcasm exactly because of how common that is

stronglikedan|4 months ago

I haven't opened the article yet, since I usually check the top comments to see if it's worth the click, but my first thought when clicking through to the comments was, "this damn article better have pictures for once".

infecto|4 months ago

My first exact same thoughts. Every time there is some interesting discovery it’s often with only a single photo or none and a huge wall of text. Pictures speak louder than words in this case.

I kept scrolling though multiple articles as they seem to have a format type for these types of articles where its numbers a small paragraph and a high quality photo. Simply love it.

JoeAltmaier|4 months ago

I'd actually have appreciated photos of the discovery as it happened. This obelisk is mounted upright. Even a picture of it being mounted, a crane and straps included.

Is this good archaeology? I worry it might be something else.

MomsAVoxell|4 months ago

The Tepe sites are really fascinating. Every discovery leads to so many more questions - how did they construct these sites, what were they using some of the structures for, and so on.

At Karahan Tepe is the pit full of pillars, with the human-face head on the outer rim .. whenever I see this pit, I get a picture in my mind that the entire site was green and fertile, and this pit was filled with water. It would be the ideal device to teach kids to swim - and so on. It's such a fascinating human discovery - the mind serious wanders.

I encourage anyone who is new to this subject to let the imagination run wild. What kinds of people could create these T-shaped pillars, carve them, use them in their building construction .. and then some day, decide to cover it all up with rubble and stone, to be buried for millennia and discovered by some strange, future civilisation.

It makes me wonder what, 12,500 years from now, of our own crazy civilisation might be unearthed, and strange new utility assigned to their purposes ..

itopaloglu83|4 months ago

To me, it looks like a festival ground, so I imagine people coming from all directions and multiple nomad tents etc. around it.

What makes me wonder is that why did these hills survive, and why are we not finding similar things in north Africa and other civilization cradles.

Maybe these were one off sites with limited use and were later just left alone, while anything in Egypt had continuous settlements so things just eroded over time, with the things like pyramids as exceptions.

Cthulhu_|4 months ago

It really depends on whether we're going to go through dark ages or a mass extinction event to the point of all our archives being destroyed; if that doesn't happen, we can look up discoveries on wikipedia. If there are any discoveries being made, because the thing with archeology is that things have to have been buried and forgotten about for a long time - grave sites, basements, that kind of thing.

I get it though, it'd be interesting to consider it, but like I said we'd need to forget things first for a long time. But another thing to consider is that the ancient Egyptians had archeologists for ancient Egyptian stuff already, with their history going back from 3000 BC to 30 AD.

foobarian|4 months ago

The fact that there was a skeleton in one of the rectangular-ish holes made me think it was a burial ground, with the obelisk as the headstone. But I am not an archeologist so idk

christkv|4 months ago

My favorite thought experiment is what will they think when they dig up bodies and find silicon implants. What cultural significance will they attribute too it.

anentropic|4 months ago

Was it really a pit back then, or that's just a result of how it's been subsequently excavated?

sethammons|4 months ago

These Tepe sites give credence to advanced civilization existing before the last ice age. One example is the mostly dismissed theory of water erosion at the base of the Sphinx, suggesting older civilizations leading up to ancient Egypt. To my understanding, it is mostly dismissed because archaeologists found the idea of something older than the Sphinx to be not possible. Tepe sites challenge this. Wild stuff.

pwillia7|4 months ago

I got pretty into this alt archaeology stuff and eventually had to move away from it.

I totally agree that the tepes challenge our timeline of when humans made cities and whatnot, but so much of their arguments is the perfect fit of stones or how flat stones are and saying it _must_ be done by modern tools.

I think they have left out how much you can get done from a construction standpoint when you have forced labor or no labor rules like we have had for some time now all over the world and especially in the West.

When I was first in Delhi and went to the Red Fort, I was shocked when they said they built the whole thing 100s of years ago in 9 years. Think about how long it would take us to build something like this now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Fort

So, I really want the ancient atlantis civ in the Sahara to be true, but the guy's I've seen promoting this are too removed from the scientific method to really be taken seriously.

This guy does some good debunking of a lot of the Netflix/Youtube Alt Archaeology people -- https://www.youtube.com/@miniminuteman773

itsnowandnever|4 months ago

I wouldn't call these guys civilization. the Tepe sites are more like an ancient UN for semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers than a settlement. they visited seasonally for a feast and then left. the only evidence we have is that they were partying. but they had no social organization at all

funnily enough, the lack of neolithic culture, social hierarchy, or permanent sedentary lifestyle (all hallmarks of "civilization") and all archeological evidence suggests they were much healthier and more peaceful than neolithic humans. that's why people link "Garden of Eden" mythology originating in ancient Sumeria to the ancient peoples' observation that people became "civilized" but at what cost since it made humans less healthy, more violent, and presumably less happy due to the novel concept of social inequality

card_zero|4 months ago

Or a more boring theory about the sphinx is that it was constructed at the orthodox time, around 2550 BC, and then later on it rained sometimes. This would be mildly surprising, as opposed to very surprising.

ghtbircshotbe|4 months ago

There is something like a billion years missing from the geological record in places called the great unconformity due to erosion on snowball earth, although it's probably not covering up any lost civilizations. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LXzDfQyUlLg

tootie|4 months ago

There were most assuredly many, many older civilizations. Humans have been more or less the same for at least 200k years and have had the same capabilities the entire time. We have preserved artwork much older than this and much finer.

If you mean to say and advanced civilization, then no this isn't really upsetting any orthodoxy.

fidotron|4 months ago

The sphinx weathering is odd but it's the Osireion that is a total anomaly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osireion

You would have thought that in a world with curious billionaires someone would pay for a ROV submersible to explore that, I certainly would if I were one.

triyambakam|4 months ago

I think it's really exciting. It seems like we always assume technology advances linearly (even with valid counter examples).

cryptonector|4 months ago

> These Tepe sites give credence to advanced civilization existing before the last ice age.

Before the last glacial period == 100,000 year ago. This is 12,000 years ago. If we assume (big big assumption here) that there's only really a single unbroken line of civilization, and also assume (big big assumption) roughly exponential growth till now, then no, 100kya would be too long ago.

But those two assumptions are not really safe to make. It's just that we _can't_ know yet.

I suspect that the Sphinx water erosion thing is real and correct, and the Sphinx much older than ancient Egypt.

mjd|4 months ago

That's impossible, the mirror wasn't invented until millennia later, so there's no way the sculptor would have known what a human face looked like.

They must think we're stupid.

Tor3|4 months ago

I see some people didn't get the obvious joke.. the big joke though is that some people actually think like that. As a little boy I was into Erich von Däniken and his books about how, basically, aliens made a lot of the "impossible to make for humans at the time" artifacts. But then my, at the time, 9-year old found the part where he wrote (paraphrased) "[photo of a sculpture made to look like a skeleton] This sculpture has the correct number of ribs. This proves that they had access to X-ray machines, because without X-ray machines this is impossible."

That's when I realized the guy was a kook and it was all rubbish. He was into it for the money, btw. The "click-bait" of the time. And in my opinion Hancock is Däniken's spiritual descendant.

simonh|4 months ago

We’ll, that’s me convinced.

Liquix|4 months ago

they have played us for absolute fools

checker659|4 months ago

So, they were all blind? They couldn't see each other? (Not to mention reflection in water).

Cthulhu_|4 months ago

But how can mirrors be real if our eyes aren't real?

sethammons|4 months ago

I don't get your joke

fatihpense|4 months ago

From the article: "The arm and hand reliefs on the T-shaped pillars found in and around Göbekli Tepe have long reinforced the idea that these stones symbolized humans. This new find at Karahan Tepe, the first to feature a human face carved into a T-shaped pillar, is considered a turning point in Neolithic research."

stevage|4 months ago

> The face of the beprenese is located at the top of the Dikili stone; its sharp lines, deep eye sockets and blunt shape nose, and a similar style with human statues found in Karahantepe. This discovery reveals not only the technical mastery of Neolithic people, but also the way he expresses himself and the ability to think abstractly.

I don't think we were in any doubt about the ability of people 12,000 years ago to think abstractly.

IAmBroom|4 months ago

Assuming, and having proof, are two different things.

codedokode|4 months ago

The age is pretty impressive, also I noticed that Firefox could translate the article without issues using privacy-preserving offline translation. Now nobody will know that I have read the article!

Cthulhu_|4 months ago

Except that you told on yourself, I know your secret!

daxfohl|4 months ago

It looks just like a giant PEZ dispenser.

IAmBroom|4 months ago

Has anyone tried pressing on the head really hard?

mike978|4 months ago

or petrified Minecraft villagers

dooglius|4 months ago

I wonder if it's possible to correct for the effects of time to see what it originally looked like

AlotOfReading|4 months ago

Archaeologists generally aren't that computer-savvy. I haven't seen any indications of paint residues on the pillars, but we know that many of the statues in these enclosures were also painted bright colors that would be missed by a digital reconstruction.

dr_dshiv|4 months ago

Is that the oldest known carved megalithic stone statue of a person?

AlotOfReading|4 months ago

Keyword "megalith". We have older carved statues. We have older carved, stone statues. We have older, carved stone statues depicting people, as well as statues from this same site that are full body.

It's from basically the same period and culture as urfa man, but at a site that's been initially dated a few hundred years earlier and is generally understood to have been inhabited first. It's contemporaneous with the famous T-pillars at Gobekli Tepe. The important thing is that this is the first T-pillar discovered with a human face, aside from the one with just a human outline.

eth0up|4 months ago

Don't take the following as an obnoxious distraction. I've not fully imbibed the featured article yet, but the entire area (region) is verily a bedlam of magnificence and wonder.

Those unfamiliar with Derinkuyu must change this hastily. Do your own research, but please see this image (pardon the url - I've been flagged for... browsing the Internet and can't access it directly):

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...

And an underground map here: https://www.lolaapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/derinkuyu...

There is/are video/s available and they are more than worth watching.

I can't remember how to spell the many other regional wonders, so won't try.

Edit: ignore anyone who comes along and tries to dismiss this particular example or the surrounding region as trivial, insignificant etc. Explore for yourself and be rewarded accordingly.

eth0up|4 months ago

I'm wondering about the negative reactions to this post. It mystifies me and I don't know whether my fear was correct and there truly is hostility to this subject or it's that some of the readers here are too stupid to recognize my use of the word bedlam as complimentary and take self-righteous pleasure in fighting for some deranged precept of honor. I guess I'll never be certain, as those offended don't have the substance to express their reason.

But it does please me that I'm wise enough to treat this place as a den of reptiles. I am right about that much, often enough.

PS: Derinkuyu is amazing, reptiles or not. And so is Turkiye

chupchap|4 months ago

Yes, these are faces, but why do they look like pillars to me? Ornamented and sculpted pillars are pretty common across civilizations and I can imagine sloping tent like roof set up that are held up by these pillars. How does one separate a pillar and a obelisk?

Mars008|4 months ago

I must say translation in Firefox is great. Now I don't have to learn Turkish...

As for article, imagine, at those times and for thousands years after in most places humans were still hunting-gathering..

BAPHOMETA88F|4 months ago

Primitive interpretation was pictographic, where the image is the absence of the "I" on the one hand. On the other hand, obelisks were objects of civil order.

gadders|4 months ago

This will get Graham Hancock back on Rogan for sure.

holoduke|4 months ago

12000 years ago is long, but also not very long. Just a few 500 grandfather's ago. Amazing what we achieved in that short timespan.

begueradj|4 months ago

How a society which is supposed to be of the hunters gatherers era raised such monuments and set up that site?

anentropic|4 months ago

maybe they had plenty of leisure time

phendrenad2|4 months ago

By "human face" they mean nose and eyebrow ridge clearly indicating a face, and most likely human.

ge96|4 months ago

The fools! Did they not check between the walls

pfdietz|4 months ago

It looks like a Carbot Animations character.

teleforce|4 months ago

Apparently Karahan Tepe is the sister site of the originally discovered Göbekli Tepe, the oldest temple site in world [1]. It's also claimed by some archeologists as the very first site of human civilization [2].

In Göbekli Tepe not only human faces, they are also many stone craving of animals or better known as Noah's Beast [3].

Both historical sites Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe, are not very far from Mount Ararat and Mount Judi, they are within a few hundreds of km in Turkey where Mount Judi is the closer of the two.

Mount Ararat is claimed by most Bible scholars as the site of the landing of Noah's Ark after the great flood [4].

According to Quran scholars, however, the actual site of the Noah's Ark resting place is Mount Judi as the word Judi is clearly and specifically mentioned in the Quran in the story of prophet Noah, inside Surah Hud 11:44 [5],[6].

In the Bible however, no exact mention of the name of actual site, and the Mount Ararat is just a mere speculation by the Bible Scholars based on story of legends [4].

[1] Göbekli Tepe:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe

[2] The Oldest Temple in The World and Its Mistery:

https://archaeotravel.eu/the-oldest-temple-in-the-world-and-...

[3] Noah's Beasts Released on the Hills of Göbekli Tepe:

https://archaeotravel.eu/noahs-beasts-released-on-the-hills-...

[4] Mount Ararat:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Ararat

[5] Mount Judi:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Judi

[6] Surah Hud 11:44:

https://quran.com/hud/44

And it was said, “O earth! Swallow up your water. And O sky! Withhold ˹your rain˺.” The floodwater receded and the decree was carried out. The Ark rested on Mount Judi, and it was said, “Away with the wrongdoing people!”

w10-1|4 months ago

Sorry, but the rectangular eyebrow and nose could just as well be a construction feature - a notch for stabilizing a wall or a beam to the next pillar. Any mouth is too faint.

Cthulhu_|4 months ago

Perhaps, but you'd probably see more of them, then. Plus it'd make more sense if it was the other way around, because gravity.

casey2|4 months ago

That's a stretch

hamonrye|4 months ago

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jasonkolb|4 months ago

[deleted]

colechristensen|4 months ago

which is just a hallucinated image of a carved face in stone which has no connection to the original besides they both are stones that resemble faces

basfo|4 months ago

Great find! and I don’t want to underestimate the discovery by any means, but...

We humans are predisposed to see anthropomorphic shapes in things. I understand why that could be interpreted as a face, but at the same time, it could just be a random shape. It’s just a “T” shape. Sure, it could look like a nose and a pair of eyes, but it could also just be... something.

card_zero|4 months ago

Other stuff at Karahan Tepe has faces on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karahan_Tepe

And you can look at similar things from the Taş Tepeler sites in general:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ta%C5%9F_Tepeler

The T-obelisk things, with their long skinny arms, do seem to represent figures. I wonder why they have to be that stupid oblong shape at all. Dual purpose as roof supports? Or just tradition, tradition causes wacky things. Looking around the various carvings from related sites, it's also evident that they were greatly interested in penises.

pavlov|4 months ago

The translated article provides some backing to the claim that it's a face in a style that matches other finds in the area:

"The arm and hand reliefs on the T-shaped standing stones found in Göbeklitepe and its surroundings have long strengthened the idea that these stones symbolize humans. This new find, which was unearthed in Karahantepe, is described as a new turning point in Neolithic period research with the fact that the human face was carved on a T-shaped standing stone for the first time."

"With its sharp lines, deep eye sockets and blunt nose, it carries a style similar to the human statues found before in Karahantepe."

Bayart|4 months ago

> We humans are predisposed to see anthropomorphic shapes in things.

This was sculpted by other modern humans.

3327|4 months ago

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